Good morning again. Time for us to, we're on a schedule
because it's not just us. It's because of the internet. So anyway, good morning again.
That was a good message Michael brought. Robert's going to preach
for a second hour, and let's be in thought and prayer for
our pastor today. He's traveling. He's preaching twice today, and
I guess he's traveling home probably tomorrow. I think he'll be home
tomorrow night. Let's open this hour's service with hymn number
272, 272, The Solid Rock. Let's all stand together. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock
I stand, All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground
is sinking sand. When darkness veils his lovely
face I rest on his unchanging grace In every high and stormy
gale My anchor holds within the veil On Christ the solid rock
I stand, All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground
is sinking sand. His oath, His covenant, His blood
support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives
way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid rock
I stand, All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground
is sinking sand. When he shall come with trumpet
sound, O may I then in him be found, Dressed in his righteousness
alone, Faultless to stand before the throne. On Christ the solid
rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. Please be seated. Good morning. For the scriptural
reading, we will be Matthew 16, We will be reading about the
Peter's Confession of Faith, and this is our confession for
all believers. It says, When Jesus came into
the coast of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying,
Whom do men say that I, the son of man am? And they said, Some
say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elijah, some others Jeremiah,
or one of the prophets. He said unto them, But whom say
you that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus
answered, and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah,
for flesh and blood hath not revealed unto thee, but the Father
which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever
thou shalt bind in the earth shall be bound in heaven. And
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heavens. Then charge he his disciples
that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. And there was our confession
that ever-believers, and this is something that is not revealed
by blood, it's not revealed only by God speaking to the hearts
of the men. So we'll be following the preaching
here. Robert, we're going to preach
for him, and I will ask Diane, I told her already, not to wait
for him to stop. So, let's preach for God's blessed
message. Dear Holy Father, we come unto
your presence asking you, first giving you thanks for the time
we have with the preachers today in the morning, that we may praise
to your name all day. We ask that you bless Robert's
message today. that you give him wisdom and
through your spirit, holy spirit, you impart that knowledge and
you can reveal your son into our hearts. We preach as well
as for Greg, he's preaching today in North Carolina, to be with
him all the time and all the brethren that they congregate
there that will give him as well wisdom and words. to put in their
heart by your Holy Spirit and all the churches that today they
gather and they preach and they praise your name. In Jesus Christ
we ask, amen. Let's stand together once more and
sing the hymn that's on the back of the bulletin. I Bread of heaven on Thee we feed,
for Thy flesh is meat indeed. Ever may our souls be fed with
this true and living bread. Day by day, with strength supplied,
through the life of Him who died. Vine of heaven, Thy blood supplies,
this blessed cup of sacrifice. Lord, thy wounds our healing
give. To thy cross we look and live. Jesus, may we ever be. Crafted, rooted, built in thee. Please be seated, Robert. Good morning, I'll be speaking
to you out of Luke chapter 12 this morning. I was talking to Tom about a song
we sung last week before we started the service, one I'd never heard
before. And I got to thinking, generational songs. I've never really paid much attention
to young people until here lately, but I look out and I see a lot
of young people. I love them all. I love them
all. I wish there was some way that
we could take away the heartache and the heartbreak that they're
going to have as they go through life. It's unavoidable. But young
people are impatient. Man, they're like jitterbugs.
They jump around from place to place. They're high strung. They
got to get her done. So their song would probably
be Marching to Zion. That's a really a good song for
young people. Marching to Zion. Of course,
those of us that are older, been around long enough to know that
the Lord takes care of us, the Lord is gracious, the Lord is
all-powerful. I guess you'd call a middle-aged
people's song would probably be, How Great Thou Art. We can
look back, or they can look back and see what thanks God is done
for them. And you've got the old people,
that's me. My song would be, Life's Sinking Sun is Setting
Fast. My race is nearly run. The strongest trials now are
passed. The victories almost won. You see what I'm saying about
generational songs? There's one song that we will
all sing at one time or another. When we walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, the children of God will fear no evil because
God is with them. And all of our songs will be
this. Oh, bear my longing soul to him
that bled and died for me, whose blood has cleansed me from all
sin and gives me victory. We're gathered here this morning
as a special people of God, the chosen of God. Sometimes we overlook
that. Sometime we forget it. Sometime
we don't even think about it. We are God's chosen people here
this morning. We're doing the best we can to
get along in a world that we don't belong in. This world is
not our home. We're just passing through. If
heaven's not our home, oh Lord, what will we do? This particular
passage in Luke chapter 12, beginning in verse 1, is strictly for the
children of God. It's for people that have already
been called. It's for people that have already
been brought into grace. Luke 12. In the meantime, when
there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people,
insomuch that they trod upon one another, He began to say
unto His disciples first of all. So what the Lord is going to
say, He is going to say to His disciples, and by extension to
us. And he tells them about the priorities
of a Christian life. He encourages them to trust God,
to look only unto God for everything we need, no matter what it is.
This message is for us. It's for things that we need
to know to take us through day-to-day living. to take us through a
life and a world where nobody understands us, where nobody
cares what we do, not knowing that except for the people of
God, there'd be no civilization, there'd be no world, because
when the last child of God is called, when the last name in
the book of life is brought to grace, there's not gonna be a
world anymore. That's when the Lord will appear
in the sky with the voice of the archangel and the trump of
God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we, which
are alive and remain, will rise together with them to meet Him
in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. People that
are not saved don't know that. But we know it, and we need encouragement,
and we need to be lifted up. We need to have things shown
to us to give us strength in daily life. And that's what the
Lord is going to do here. These disciples that He's telling
this to are fixing to stand in the full sunlight of persecution. It's not long until the Lord
is taken away. And then the Jews and the world
are going to turn every bit of hate they had for Christ, they're
going to turn it on the disciples. and they need to be forewarned. And that's what the Lord is doing
here. Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. We can't understand how these
people were, but they would literally take a house away from a widow
and turn her out into the street and stand out on the street while
they're throwing all the furniture out and pray a long prayer that
God would watch over this widow. They would stand before the crowd
and say, this people, all the people that they're supposed
to be shepherding, this people don't know the law. It's because
they didn't teach it. They loved long robes. They loved
to meet each other on the corner and strike hands and wear their
broad borders on their clothes. They were hypocrites. They were
raised in this religion. They made a living doing this
religion. They could care less about the things of God. And
the Lord said, beware of them. Watch them. Stay away from them.
That's where your trouble is going to come from. And then
he goes on to tell them that there's nothing covered that's
not going to be revealed. Scripture tells us in Hebrews
chapter 4, I think verse 8, that all things are naked and open
in the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. God knows everything
about us. He knows what's in our innermost
hearts, He knows what's in our minds, He knows everything we've
ever done, and He knows the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. So
it's all going to be revealed. Their day is coming. Watch out
for them. Beware of them. Don't have anything to do with
them. But don't worry about it, because God's going to take care
of it. And on down in verse 4, he says, And I say unto you,
my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body. And
after that, have no more they can do. Now, some of the disciples
were killed. Some of the disciples died. John,
for instance, we understand, died of a natural death. Peter
did not. And the Lord said, don't be afraid
of them. The most they can do is kill you. That's the worst
thing they can do to you, and then they can't touch you anymore.
They did have the authority to kill. Peter told the crowd on
the day of Pentecost, him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, he hath taken and by wicked
hands hath crucified and slain. You remember Stephen? Stephen
stood before the crowd, and he said, You stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your
fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not
your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which
showed before the coming of the Just One, of whom you have now
been the betrayers and murderers. who received the law by the disposition
of angels and have not kept it." And they killed him. They tried
to kill Paul. They laid in wait for Paul. They
tried to kill everyone that would take their job away from them
and their religious prestige. But don't be afraid of them.
Don't fear them. Who are you going to fear? Verse
5, but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear. Fear him which
after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say
unto you, fear him. Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse
39, God said, I am he, even he, and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Neither is
there any that can deliver out of my hand. Now we respect God. We don't fear God because he's
our father. This fear is a healthy respect. God does the deciding about everything. That's why we need to fear and
respect God. Man proposes, but God disposes. That's in Proverbs. We can sit
here, make the plan for our life. We can, we can actually make
a plan to be a millionaire by the time we're 40. And God has
allowed some people to do that. You don't have the ability to
carry these plans through. God decides. The first word out
of our mouth should be, if God will. If God will, I'll go to
college. If God will, I'll graduate and
get a job. If God will, I'll get married
and have three children. If God will. Children of God should place
their hands totally in the providence of God, because he will take
care of us. God is the one we need to watch
out for because He's the one that has power over us after
we're dead. Don't fear the Pharisees, fear
God. Are not five spare a soul for
too far of the engine? And verse six, and not one of
them is forgotten before God. But even the very hairs of your
head are all numbered. That don't mean just my head.
That means the head of every human being that's ever been
born is alive right now and ever will be born. We can't even count
that high. But God knows. That's another
reason why you need to respect God. God knows everything that
there is to know, and he knows it all at the same time. We can't
even imagine that. The point being, if God will
take care of some little bitty scrubby bird, He sure as the
world is going to take care of His children that He loves. That's
the main point of what the Lord is telling right here. Don't
worry about things like that, because God takes care of the
birds, He will surely, as the world, take care of you. Now remember that the Lord is
speaking to the disciples and the children of God here. This
is something we need to keep in our minds continuously because
if we start depending on our own strength and we try to figure
our own way out of life's problem, we're not going to make it until
God gives us the grace. To put every problem we have,
every worry we have, until God gives us the grace to place them
in His hands, we're not ever going to be happy. We're not
ever going to be able to face this world in a happy frame of
mind until we're dependent on God to get us through. Verse
8. I'm sorry, down to verse 15. And he said unto them, take heed
and beware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in
the abundance of the things which he possesseth. You can ask your grandmother,
what does it mean to covet? You can ask anybody, what's it
mean to covet? They'll give you the straight
answer. It means to want something that's not yours. That's not
really what covetous means. But why would you have to tell
Christians to beware of it? Why would you have to tell the
disciples to beware of it? Well, I can give you one good
reason. There's 12 men sitting there, and one of them's a thief.
One of them betrayed the Lord for 30 pieces of silver. Covetousness. That's how bad covetousness is. You want to really know how bad
it is to covet something? An obsession. I mean, to covet
something is an obsession. You're going to have it no matter
who owns it, no matter who's got it, no matter what it takes
to get it. You will have it. That's what covetousness means. What's the first mention of covetousness
in the Bible? Genesis chapter 3 and verse 4,
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die,
for God doth know that in a day ye eat thereof ye shall be as
gods to no good from evil. You're going to get something
that only God has. You're going to be just as good
as He is. You're going to know just as
much as He does. You shall not surely die when
the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to
the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. She took of
the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave unto her husband with
her, and he did eat. That's covetousness. I'm going
to be as good as God. He's holding something back from
us, Adam. And I don't know what it is,
but I'm going to find out. Now, by extension, covetousness
is going to be, is meant to be, to be equal with God. And by
extension, that'll come down to free will. Now, there's a
law when you translate scripture or a book of any kind, There's
a law called the law of first mention. And what this says is
any time something is mentioned in this book, the first time,
that's usually what it means from then on. That's called the
law of first mention. So the first mention was wanting
to be as God. And it'll mean that just about
every time it's mentioned from then on. and it will carry over
directly to free will. Free will is a desire of a man
or a woman to have the ability to tell God no. Free will is a desire of a man
to have the ability to look at the death of Christ as it's written
in the scripture. and decide whether they believe
it or not. And decide whether it's good
enough to save them or not. And to decide if Christ is telling
the truth when He said, it is finished. And if they don't think
it's right, they have the ability to tell Christ, no, I don't want
none of this. Free will is the ability of a
man to consider the new birth. and tell the Holy Spirit, no,
I don't want none of that. Covetousness. Beware of covetousness. It's not simply a matter of wanting
to have a pickup truck like somebody else you got, or wanting to have
a nice pair of boots like Randy Travis. It is wanting it, demanding
it, and going to get it. I don't care what it costs. Priorities, that's what the Lord's
talking to His disciples about right here. Beware of covetousness. For a man's life consists not
in the abundance of the things he possesses. All of the things
that you can accumulate, all the things you can save up, all
the things you can surround yourself with, there's going to come a
day when they don't mean anything. And the Lord gives them a parable
to prove this. That there was a man, he was
no doubt a farmer, landowner, or whatever, and he had a good
year. Man, everything came back threefold. All the corn stalks had five
ears of corn on them. Wheat came up knee high to I
don't know what. Everything came together in that
one year, and there are years like that. Well, when he looks
around, he don't have enough room to put it. I know what I'll
do. I'll tear down these little old skimpy, ugly barns. I'll
dig some big barns and I'll put all my stuff in there and I'll
have it made for a couple of years. And I'll tell my soul,
soul take thine ease. Don't worry about the rest of
this rabble. Let them do whatever they want
to do. Just kick back, watch TV, have a good time. Just enjoy
life. But the Lord told him that night,
this thou fool, this night shall thy life, thy soul, be taken
from thee. And then what's going to happen
to all the things he had? Verse 22, And he said unto his
disciples, Therefore, now therefore means in conclusion, or because
of what I said before. It's pointing you back to what's
been said. In this particular instance,
what's been said is that all of your possessions when you
die are going to go to somebody else. Because you can't take
it with you, because you've got to leave it here behind. Therefore, Therefore, I say unto you, take
no thought for your life, what you shall eat, neither for the
body what you shall put on. The life is more than meat and
the body is more than raiment. Remember, he's talking to children
of God about getting their priorities straight. Luke chapter 16, there was a certain rich man
clothed in purple and fine linen, who fared sumptuously every day. And it goes on to say that there
was a beggar named Lazarus, laid at his gate, full of sword, desiring
to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.
And then it says, and it came to pass that the beggar died,
and was carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham, The rich
man died also and was buried. And in hell, he lift up his eyes
and seeth Abraham afar off with Lazarus in his bosom. Never doubt that that rich man
in hell would have traded all of the purple robes he ever owned
in his life He would have traded every purple robe in the whole
world. He would have traded the finest
linen garment from all over the universe. He would have traded
every sumptuous meal he had ever eaten for one drop of water. Send Lazarus that he may dip
his finger in water and cool my tongue. That's why the body
is more important than what you wear. That's why that your life
is worth more than what you eat. Because there is life after death,
or there is death after death. Everything we do here, everything
we do here will stay here when our soul leaves this body. What is the number one priority? What is life all about? Why are
we here? People write books about that.
Psychiatrists will get up there and they'll give you a 25 or
30 day spiel on why you're here, where you came from, what you're
supposed to do and where you're going. Scripture gets it all
down to one little verse. Let us hear the conclusion of
the whole matter. To fear God and keep his commandments
is the whole duty of man. That's why we're here. Unless
we're given the grace of God to do it, we're not going to
keep the commandments of God. It doesn't change the fact that
that's why every man and woman's alive today to fear God and keep
his commandments. Everything we accumulate is nothing. Everything we got here in this
world is nothing. Because we cannot take it with
us. Once we realize that, we'll be
okay. We'll have things put in their
proper place. The things that are important
will be the things of God. We'll see by things we can't
see. That's how we'll live. Not by
things we see around us. That sounds easy to do, but it's
not. It's really not. People are accumulators. I am. I got stuff I've had 40
years. We unloaded that truck when we
bought the house. That stuff had been in storage
for four years. I unloaded stuff. I have no idea
why I kept it. I don't even know what it is.
We accumulate things. We keep them near and dear to
us. I don't know why we do it, but we do. And the Lord said,
don't worry about it. You say, well, nobody is going
to go to that length about something to eat and something to wear.
Nobody's that obsessive. If you would have been in Nevada
in the year 2000, you'd have changed your mind. We saw people
mortgage their houses, max out their credit cards. borrow every
penny they could borrow from the bank, borrow from their friend,
and spend it all on food and clothes because they thought
the world, the stock market, was going to crash in Y2K. We've
seen them do that. So don't never think that this
is a heedless warning. It's heedless to us that we eat
three meals a day. But when the food supply gets
scarce, turn to God. Put all your need and hopes on
Christ. That's what this is telling you
right here. Verse 25, Which of you, by taking
thought, can add to his stature one cubit? Well, stature means
how tall you are, right? Does anybody here want to be
a foot and a half taller? That's what it says. Can you
think about it to make yourself a foot and a half taller? No,
it's talking about our place in society. It's talking about
our place in our job, our place in this church, our place in
a family, whatever position you're in at any given moment. Can you
give a thought to making it better and make it happen? No. No, no, no, no. You can go to
work for a company and sit there and you can plan and plot and
you say, okay, in five years I'll own this company. We can't
do anything that God doesn't allow us to do. We can't do anything
unless God does it for us. How many people can sit there
and take thought and improve their station in life? And the
Lord goes on to say, if you can't do that, what makes you think
you can worry about other things and get away with it? It's hard
to believe. It's hard to accept. It's hard
to understand. Nothing is in our control. Everything
is up to God. I've always said that free will
is a product of Providence. And it is. You think about it.
I'm going to free will go out and get in that car and drive
down I-6 to New Smyrna Beach. But all of a sudden there's a
wreck you can't get through. So I'm going to free will turn
off and go through Sanford. Well, there's a flood there and
you can't get through. So I'm going to free will turn
around and come back to I-6 and come back to the church. You
see what I'm saying? We have no control over events. We don't
have the ability, the authority, or anything to sit down and plan
our lives and make them work out that way. We have to depend on God to get
done the things that we hope will get done. Verse 29, And
seek not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither
be ye of doubtful mind. There are two things here that
we're told not to do. One of them is don't worry about
where we're going to get the next meal, don't worry about
the next pair of Levi's that's coming from, but the really,
really important one to me is to be not of a doubtful mind. There may be someone here, and
I'm sure there is, that has never been of a doubtful mind. God
has called you. You heard the call. You answered
the call. You've lived for God ever since
then. You've never once doubted anything. I don't doubt there
are people like that, but I'm not one of them. For years and
years and years, I had a doubtful mind. So I speak from personal
experience when I tell you these things. There are a lot of reasons
why you have a doubtful mind. I'm only going to touch on three
of them. The first one is mentioned in the previous verse. O ye of
little faith. That's what the Lord told the
disciples. Faith is something that we cannot
come up with on our own. When God first called me, I would
read the scriptures and I'd think I have no faith. I have absolutely
positively no faith. Everybody else in church has
got more faith than I do. I got the least faith of anybody
in the whole world. And I would read about the lady
that had the issue of blood for all those years. And she went
to the doctor and they didn't help her. They only made it worse.
And she thought within herself, if only I can touch the hem of
his garment, I'll be made whole. And I would be so disappointed
in myself and so ashamed because I could never have that kind
of faith. I could never do it. And reading through the Scriptures,
I came to 2 Kings, I think chapter 3. When the chariot came down from
heaven and scooped up Elijah and took off, his mantle fell
on the ground and Elisha was there. And Elisha picked up that
mantle and he walked to the bank of the Jordan River. And he took
that mantle and struck the water with it and said, where is the
Lord God of Elijah? And the waters parted. And I
thought I could never do that. I'll never have that kind of
faith. I don't even have enough faith
to let one of my friends down through the roof so Christ could
heal him. And I doubted, can I even be
a child of God with no more faith than I have? But God is gracious. And He opened
my mind to this one thing. I have enough faith to confess
with my mouth the Lord Jesus. I have enough faith to believe
that God has raised Him from the dead. I have enough faith
to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, like Mike
talked about this morning. So whatever faith I have is enough,
because faith is the gift of God. Ephesians 2 and verse 8,
for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself,
it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should
boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto
good work, which was before ordained, that we should walk in them."
God gives the faith. And if I need more faith, He
will give it to me. He will. And after God opened
my mind to this, no more doubtful mind about faith. Another thing that caused me
a tremendous problem was repentance. I studied after the pilgrims
and they felt like repentance was a lifetime project, and it
is. It really is. Every day we repent. We pray for forgiveness for sins
we've committed. But they were far more strict
than that. And in the early seventies, There
was a big-time Calvinist preacher who came down to Houston, Texas. And he preached a message on
repentance. And his main point was that you've
really not repented unless you go back to before God called
you and give back what you stole and apologize to people you had
wronged. And he made it sound scriptural.
And I believed it. And I spent months laying awake
at night thinking about how to give back everything I'd ever
taken on the job. Trying to remember everybody
I had seriously wronged and how to find them and apologize to
them. I know this sounds kind of silly. I know that. But children
of God do strange things whenever they're in a doubtful mind. I
was so severely depressed about this, you wouldn't believe it.
One of the men told me, I told him, I said, I'm having a really,
really bad time with this. He said, well, I took all of
my stuff, put it in the back of the truck, took it down to
the city dump, threw it out and let God take care of it. And
he really did. I said, that's not the answer.
That's not the answer. And I struggled with this and
struggled with it, and finally I realized one thing. God brought
my mind around to this point. All of the companies that I stole
from, all of the people that I wronged, and some of them were
serious, all of the things I had ever done in my whole life were
sins against God. And that was it. I thought about
David. David committed adultery with
one of his very best friend's wife, and got her pregnant, and
killed her husband, and married the widow. And when God put a
spirit of repentance on David, what did he say? Oh, I've got
to go dig up what's-his-name and apologize. No, he didn't
say it. He said, Against thee and thee only have I sinned and
done this evil in thy sight. God is the one we have to deal
with about sin. God is the one we have to go
to with repentance. And what happens when you do?
You'll find out that God has already forgotten all of these
old sins that I was worried about. They're gone. They're over back
and into the sea. They're as far as the east is
from the west. And then for the first time,
You really understand what it means when God said He made Him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. And you consider my standing
before God, am I an unrepentant sinner? No, no, no, no, no. I
stand before God holy and without blame according to Ephesians
chapter 1. My estate before God is that
I was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself for me. Don't worry about all that silly
bad stuff I did before. It's already been taken care
of. It's already been taken care
of. So that was the end of that part
of a doubtful mind. It took a long time to get over
that, but that's gone. But the third thing was the sin
problem. Now, a lot of you may never have
been Calvinist. Calvinist approach salvation
from a legal standpoint, and there is from truth in that,
because it's described by legal terms. Believing that, believing
that Christ had come and made complete atonement for sin, I
believed that the law had been abrogated. That's a word that
means it had been fulfilled and set aside. I believed that with
all my heart. But I also believed it was a
rule of life. It's how we governed our life
was by the Ten Commandments. Well, after about 20 minutes
of the first hour of the first day, you realize you can't do
that. I mean, that's not going to work. Because you're faced
with this problem. If the Ten Commandments are a
rule of life and you can't do them, very possibly you're not
a child of God. Because children of God are supposed
to be able to do it. I mean, he keeps telling you,
keep his commandments, keep his commandments. You should be able
to do it. Then you're kind of separated yourself from reality. And believe it or not, that's
how I was when I came here to Florida. Now, whenever you feel
like that, you ignore as much of your sin as you possibly can.
Cause you can't deal with it. You become narrow-minded, bigoted. I'm talking about able to stand
here and look at children of God that tell you that they're
a child of God and are still a sinner and judging them. No, no, no, no. You cannot be
a child of God and a sinner because that's what the Puritan said. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden you realize that
you are a sinner. You were born a sinner. You lived
a sinner. You were a sinner yesterday.
You're a sinner today. You're a sinner tomorrow. You're
going to be a sinner as long as you're in this body. When
I say you, I mean me. And then when God opens your
eyes to the fact that you cannot overcome it, It's the old man. You never realized before there's
two natures, the new man and the old man. When God opens your
eyes to the fact that you are a sinner and yet you're a child
of God for the first time, I realize what it means when Paul says,
we have this treasure in earthen vessels that God may have all
of the glory. For the first time, you realize
that as long as you're in this body, you're going to be unable
to stop sinning because even breathing can be a sin. Everything we do in this life
can be considered a sin and an affliction because we are in
rebellion against God. So what do you do? You put it
in the hands of God. Oh Lord, I don't seem to be able
to do the things that I want to do. And the things that I
don't want to do, I don't seem to be able to not do them. That
was Paul's words. And once you come to that position,
once God brings you to the point to where you realize, I got to
leave it up to you, God, because I cannot handle it. then your
doubtful mind is gone. Then you can walk out on the
front porch in the morning and look around and you can think,
this is the day that the Lord has made. And you can pray and
say, thank you, Lord, for bringing us to Florida. Thank you for
giving me a wife all these years that loved me and took care of
me. Thank you for brothers and sisters that love me in spite
of who I am. Thank you, Father, for putting
us all in the same condition so we can sympathize and encourage
one another. Thank you, Lord, for everything
you've ever done. And you can sit here in this
church, and you can sing a song that says, Jesus do us all things
well, and you can mean it! It's like I told you before,
we're all sitting here together with one thing in mind to make
it through the world where we don't belong to go on and be
with the Lord. And that's it. Be ye not of a
doubtful mind. And then the Lord goes on to
say, seek ye the kingdom of God. Come to church. That's the one
place to start. Mingle with the others. Listen
to them. Pat them on the back. Give the
young people a hug. They're children of God. We're
all here for the same reason. Encourage one another. But realize
this one thing. Total faith in Christ. Total dependence on God. is the only thing that's going
to get us through this world alive. Anything else leads to
eternal death. Father, we come before you this
morning, Father, Asking you to bless us, Father, with all spiritual
blessings in Christ. To open our eyes to the scriptures,
Father. Open our hearts to the brothers
and sisters in the Lord. Give us grace, Father, to worship
you in an acceptable manner. Give us the faith and grace to
have priorities in our life, Father, that glorify you to be
able to go through the day, Father, praising you and looking to you
for all things. Be with Greg and Trish, give
them a safe trip home, Father. And we thank you again, especially
for sending him to preach in this church. We ask these things
in Jesus name. Amen. More secure is no one ever than
the loved ones of the Savior, not yon star on high abiding,
nor the bird in home nest hiding. God his own doth tend and nourish,
In his holy courts they flourish, Like a father kind he spares
them, In his loving arms he bears them. Neither life nor death
can ever From the Lord his children sever, For his love and deep
compassion Comforts them in tribulation. Little flock to joy then yield
thee, Jacob's God will ever shield thee, Rest secure with this Defender,
At His will all foes surrender. What he takes or what he gives
us shows the Father's love so precious. We may trust his purpose
wholly, tis his children's welfare only. Amen. Thank you.